joseph doyle hankins
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ph.d.
candidate in socio-cultural
anthropology
university
of chicago
hirai
7-25-2-203
edogawa-ku
tokyo japan
東京都江戸
川区
平井7-
25-2-203
818
806 563 3139 (US)
080
6563 3139 (日)
doylej
at uchicago dot edu
at
any given time, some 40,000 cattle are eating in the feedlots outside
of lubbock texas. if the wind hits just right, their presence goes
unnoticed by not a single lubbock resident. bits of these animals coast
down the lubbock streets, making their way into lubbock bodies. and
bits of the money these animals generate make their way into lubbock
pockets. after months eating away, these cattle are sent on to
slaughterhouses. there their lives are taken and their parts separated.
some sent out to be eaten locally, some sent out much further, to
japan, to be turned into leather.
tanning
leather in japan makes for a certain kind of person. the historical
stigma of the industry inheres in the industry's workers. threatening
contagion, a hint of this stigma limits marriage, employment, and
residential possibilities. but these tanneries are closing. the ones in
tokyo are on the verge of collapse. subsequent generations of japanese
people are finding employment elsewhere and do so more and more to
avoid that stigma. or perhaps simply to fulfill other dreams. leather
from abroad costs less. instead then leather is imported. foreigners
fill the factories.
but
these tanners are rallied to multicultural recognition. alongside
indigenous ainu, korean and chinese descendents, ryukyuans (okinawans),
and (the list goes on), these tanners find that they can win domestic
and international support if they work together, if they ostend a
recognizable culture and history. support that secures educational and
employment opportunities, that might provide legal defense against
discrimination. support that indicates a fundamental recognition of
these groups' rights as human. support that challenges the idea of a
homogenous japan.
research
My
research project, Working through
Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan,
examines how
the conditions of possibility of Buraku political
action are structured in present-day Japan. I conducted a year and a
half of fieldwork researching two forms of
internationalization with respect to this primary question. One form of
internationalization is the neoliberalization of industries that have
historically underpinned Buraku discrimination; and the other is the
internationalization of a multicultural discourse of human rights and
minority group rights.
The
Japanese government's present relationship with the Buraku liberation
movement has made the government hesitant to accede to international
and WTO pressure to liberalize industries such as leather production.
However, as the 2005 Hong Kong meeting of the WTO made evident, cries
for exactly this type of free-trade agreement are increasing in
magnitude, and large concessions have already been made. Consequently,
Buraku identity is being distanced from industries frequently seen as
the source of Buraku stigma. These industries are either being replaced
entirely with imports from abroad, or they are being filled with
foreign workers, who are immune to the Buraku label. As a result, the
criterion of occupational association, by which someone might be
recognized (ie, presupposed and entailed) as Buraku, is becoming
increasingly mediated by other such identifying criteria as spatial or
familial ties to Buraku stigma. In this process more and more people do
not have any idea that they might be 'Burakumin' because their great
grandfather once worked in a tannery. A Buraku liberation organization
then finds itself trying to mobilize a population that increasingly may
not recognize itself as Buraku and furthermore may reject that
recognition entirely.
On
the other hand, due to successes of the Buraku Liberation League and
partner organizations in India and Bangladesh, in 2003 the UN
introduced to its list of recognized forms of discrimination a new
category of discrimination - "discrimination based on work and
descent." What exactly this discrimination is, how it will be
investigated, and how it will be addressed are currently topics of
heated debate among affected communities and within the UN. Similarly,
this past February the UN special rapporteur on racism released his
first report on the status of minority groups, racism, and xenophobia
in Japan. These UN-level changes are but two of several indications, at
many levels domestic and international, of the rising stakes of a
certain multicultural mode of recognizing minorities. More
specifically, they are indications of the rising stakes of a certain
multicultural mode of recognizing minorities in a heretofore
'homogenous' Japan.
Working through Skin
examines how an organization maintains satisfying politics when it is
no longer rallying around a set of identifiable physical markers but
instead around the deployment of words. I develop a theory of
"multicultural labor," focusing on the kinds of material practices
necessary to produce labor as an identity category. My theorization of
multicultural labor grins attention to genres of work assemblages of
arguments, tasks, and orientations to material objects. It is a
methodological ground for examining how the circulation of
multicultural political discourse overlaps with the circulation of
labor-based markers of difference to transform the political, ethical,
and affective dispositions of a people called Buraku.
My dissertation research aims at exploring the presumptions, effects, and the stakes of this incitement to multiculturalism (and to a certain kind of minority-ness) within Buraku political argument as it comes up against populations who find themselves progressively more, and in different contexts, able to pass as non-Buraku. Inspired by theoretical and political work that elaborates the historical processes by which the Japanese nation-sate became consolidated and thereby created erased or silenced others who then need to be recognized or granted a voice, I focus on how it came to be both appropriate and hopefully effective to call groups in Japan minorities in the first place. How is it that listing out all the (increasingly more numerous) silenced voices and giving them proper recognition came to be the political and theoretical response par excellence to the threat of Japanese homogeneity? My project is an investigation of the effects of being recognized as a minority group that has certain inviolable rights under a rubric of multiculturalism, and as a minority group lined up alongside other minority groups.
My dissertation research aims at exploring the presumptions, effects, and the stakes of this incitement to multiculturalism (and to a certain kind of minority-ness) within Buraku political argument as it comes up against populations who find themselves progressively more, and in different contexts, able to pass as non-Buraku. Inspired by theoretical and political work that elaborates the historical processes by which the Japanese nation-sate became consolidated and thereby created erased or silenced others who then need to be recognized or granted a voice, I focus on how it came to be both appropriate and hopefully effective to call groups in Japan minorities in the first place. How is it that listing out all the (increasingly more numerous) silenced voices and giving them proper recognition came to be the political and theoretical response par excellence to the threat of Japanese homogeneity? My project is an investigation of the effects of being recognized as a minority group that has certain inviolable rights under a rubric of multiculturalism, and as a minority group lined up alongside other minority groups.
163 Bergen
Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Brooklyn, NY 11217
773
266 7432
doylej@uchicago.edu
doylej@uchicago.edu